Not long ago, Slate ran a wonderful article on 8 awful uses of humor in Courts of Law. However, the failed to include one bot mot from Justice Scalia, reportedly the funniest sitting justice. Here now, a summary of their punchlines:

It’s an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word.

Haluck v. Ricoh Electronics, Inc.

MR. CALLAHAN: Have you ever heard of The Twilight Zone?

WITNESS: Yes sir.

MR. CALLAHAN: Goes kind of like this, do do, do do. . . . You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land, whose boundaries are that of imagination; that’s a sign post up ahead, your next stop, The Twilight Zone. “Do do, do do. Do do, do do.” (sung aloud and repeatedly)

Using the bathroom during a courtroom break, one defendant noticed a juror at the urinal and jokingly announced, “Vote for me!” The juror reported the joke to the judge, leading to additional criminal charges, and an eventual conviction for attempting to influence a juror.

In one California death penalty case, the judge joked that any jurors caught discussing the case inappropriately would be shot. The defendant claimed on appeal that this joke diminished the seriousness of the death penalty in the juror’s minds.

One defense attorney was attempting to describe a hypothetical scenario in which he shot another defense attorney:

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: …if I were now to harm, shoot someone, Mr. Strople here, if I shot him right now—

COURT: Permission granted.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That might be justified—

COURT: Mr. Strople is a public defender, for the record.

On appeal, the death row inmate claimed that this joke revealed the judge was biased against defense attorneys (because it is “justified” to shoot them). The appellate court agreed that the jokes were “unfortunate,” but rejected a new trial, calling the jokes “relatively brief and mild,” and noting that the defense attorneys themselves participated.

“What’s the big rush to get back to Pennsylvania? It’s an ugly state.”

When a landlord testified that her tenant’s child had called her a bitch, the judge retorted, “I’m sure that wasn’t the first time someone called you a bitch.”

Responding to a mother with a crying baby, he declared: “If she only knew how much I hate kids, she would not have brought that kid in here today.”

Lamdin then mused to his courtroom that “we [already] confiscate cell phones and we put the cell phones in plastic bags and send them down to Annapolis. I suggested maybe we ought to do the same with children except poke holes in the bag. . . . We ordered some plastic bags about five feet tall but they haven’t been – they haven’t come in yet.”

When a man with the last name Crook pled guilty to driving without a license and possessing drug paraphernalia, the judge demanded, “Why did you drive so poorly? Smoke a little weed before you got behind the wheel? . . . Smoke a little crack before you got behind the wheel? . . . Well, you’ve got the appropriate last name… All right crack head, Crook.”

In a court hearing on prostitution, Lamdin performed an imitation of ghetto-talk. (The transcript reads much like when The Office’s Michael Scott got in trouble for reenacting a racially-charged Chris Rock routine.) “Who put up your bond money for you, your pimp? . . . If I were to release you, you’d be scratching that itch tonight. . . . Ma’am, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

British Barrister wigs became popular in the mid-1600’s in France and England, thanks supposedly to Louis XIII, and as principal accoutrements for courtroom attorneys. But the tradition can be traced much further back to medieval times when monks acting in a legal role would wear linen coifs to cover their bald spots. This led to the wearing of skulls caps over the coifs until cornered hats worn over the skulls caps became de rigueur. Solicitors, attorneys who prepare legal documents but rarely appear in court, traditionally did not wear wigs. Barrister wigs come in different styles based on rank:

The full-bottomed or “Spaniel” wig

Worn by: Queen’s Counsel, Leading Counsel, Judges, Members of the House of Lords Features: The Spaniel wig is the largest wig, lending us the phrase “big wig.” This wig features thick curls that cover the ears and drop down to the shoulders.

The bob wig

Worn by: Judges

Features: frizzed sides with a looped tail hanging down the back.

The tie wig

Worn by: Barristers

Features: Covers half the head, rows of curls on side and back, and a looped tail.

In 2007, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales announced money-saving changes to court dress for judges and lawyers. Such was the outrage over the proposal, the sartorial shift was delayed for six months. Since late 2008, the wearing of wigs in civil and family court has been completely abolished, reserving wigs entirely for criminal court. Barrister wigs, now made from white horse hair, are worn by both male and female attorneys.

“Police in Mexico City said a drunken driving suspect stopped at an alcohol checkpoint was betrayed by his pet parrot, which told police “he’s drunk.”

Had this occurred in the U.S., odds are a competent criminal defense attorney could successfully challenge the sobriety test. As for the parrot’s remarks, it’s all hearsay and would never make it to the jury unless a D.A. could convince the court that such remarks were more like a tape recorder playing back words spoken by the Defendant (“estoy borracho”) and less like a sentient creature capable of speech (“está borracho”).

As today marks the 150 anniversary of Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg address, here now a novel bit of American Civil War minutiae. The battle cry of Confederate soldiers was known as the rebel yell, a name more recently associated with Billy Idol’s single of the same name, released November 1983 (in fact the song title references a rot-gut spirit). Union soldiers would describe the call as a “rabbit’s scream,” a cross between an “Indian whoop and wolf-howl,” and “a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall.”

The Confederate yell was intended to help control fear. As one soldier explained: “I always said if I ever went into a charge, I wouldn’t holler! But the very first time I fired off my gun I hollered as loud as I could and I hollered every breath till we stopped.” Jubal Early once told some troops who hesitated to charge because they were out of ammunition: “Damn it, holler them across.” –Historian Grady McWhiney (1965)

As no audio recordings of the rebel yell exist from the Civil War, historians have used various onomatopoeiae to describe its sound including:

Depending on who you ask, Jesús Malverde was either a hero or a menace to the people of Sinaloa. Though details are murky, Malverde, “The King of Sinaloa,” was killed by authorities who regarded him as a bandit. On the other hand, the people regarded him as a Robin Hood-type character who gave what he stole and fought against oppression. While the church refuses to recognize Malverde as a saint, since his death in 1909, he has been praised as a folk-hero and canonized as the narco-saint.

Malverde’s legacy is captured on several films, each one containing a long interlude of a narcocorrido (a type of Mexican music and song tradition which evolved out of the norteño folk corrido tradition, often depicting drug smuggling, murder, and extortion). In one episode of AMC’s Breaking Bad, DEA Agent Hank Schrader is shown with a bust of Malverde on his desk.

As a bonus, here now the narcocorrido from the second season of Breaking Bad, “Negro Y Azul:”